Ikea Makes Norway Eat Its Vegetables

Ikea is famous for its Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam, but while people may love those meatballs, most people don't associate them with healthfulness. Now, however, they'll be a tiny bit more healthful in Norway, because Ikea has responded to critics of its food by just putting vegetables on everything.

According to The Local, the meatball plate normally comes with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam, which is the way the dish is traditionally served in Sweden. Vegetables are not traditionally associated with the dish, but Ikea customers could buy a side of vegetables for a surcharge of about a dollar. Public health experts, however, argued that people should not have to pay extra to eat more healthfully, and the side of vegetables should be free.

Those public health officials should be pretty happy now, because Ikea Norway says it is going to make vegetables compulsory. Now all the orders of meatballs will come with vegetables, and they'll be a bit more expensive by about a dollar.

Ikea Norway's communication director Jan Christian Thommesen said the change had been in the works for a while and was a result of customer feedback.

"The change comes after a survey we did a while ago," he said. "We got a lot of feedback from our customers in Norway that they missed having vegetables with the meatballs and we have decided to listen to our customers."

Of course, now Ikea is getting complaints from people who aren't interested in vegetables and don't want to have to pay a dollar more for their food, because it's really hard to please everybody at the same time.